


What We Lost in the Fire, We Found in the Ashes

by morwen_of_gondor



Series: The Kingston Shatterpoint [9]
Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Action, Book 5: Lord Hornblower, Brotherhood, Brotherly Love, Character Death Fix, Fix-It, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Light Angst, Male Friendship, Napoleonic Wars, Period Typical Attitudes, Spoilers, for Lord Hornblower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28373499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morwen_of_gondor/pseuds/morwen_of_gondor
Summary: A jump forward in time, and a village called Caudebec...Now rewritten with bonus character development and conversation!
Relationships: William Bush & Horatio Hornblower & Archie Kennedy
Series: The Kingston Shatterpoint [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032912
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	What We Lost in the Fire, We Found in the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> And we reach the second thing that I was bound and determined to fix in this AU. If you haven't read _Lord Hornblower,_ this fic's existence is kind of a spoiler, but if you've gotten this far you've probably already figured it out.

_"Nonsuch,_ to me!" Bush roared, slashing furiously at the nearest French uniform as the Frogs did their damnedest to drive his men into the river.

A handful of seamen cut their way through the blue-and-red ranks, and he fired the last charge in his pistol — not his, actually, he'd taken it off a dead man — over their heads to give them a little cover as they scrambled up the side of the powder barge to join him. He spared a glance over his shoulder and saw his lieutenant, who had insisted on coming despite the risk of depriving _Nonsuch_ of her two most senior officers, performing some sort of operation with a sack. "Kennedy, what the hell are you doing?"

"Leaving a little surprise for our friends, sir! But we'd better not be here when they find it!" Another glance showed Bush that the sack had once contained powder.

"Understood! Here, you three — stand with me. The rest of you, over the side and into the boats! Leave one for us, now. Understand?"

A ragged chorus of "Aye aye, sir!" answered him, and all but three of _Nonsuch's_ men disappeared over the rail of the barge into the boats.

Bush trusted that they would leave one for him and Kennedy to escape in. If they stayed alive long enough to escape. For every soldier shot or slashed down by his men, two more swarmed up out of the darkness, and all at once they were up over the rail of the barge. It would be a matter of seconds before Bush and his men were cut off. "Get to the boat!" he bellowed at the three seamen who stood with him. "Now!" he added when they hesitated.

There was no time now for Kennedy's carefully laid powder trail (if indeed it had not already been kicked out by stamping and scrambling feet). "Go!" he roared again, now at his first lieutenant, seized a pistol right out of the hand of an astonished Frenchman, and aimed it at the nearest hatchway. On a powder barge like this, nearly any shot that made its way belowdecks would suffice to send the whole ship off to Kingdom Come.

Bush heard the click of a flint coming down on steel — a strangely loud sound in a moment of quiet — and then a solid body slammed into him hard, and he was knocked backwards over the side. Then he struck the water and was swallowed up by cold darkness and fiery light that was nearly blinding in its intensity even through the murky river-water, just as a shockwave slammed into his chest with all the force of a musket ball and drove all the air out of his lungs. He tried instinctively to breathe, and found that he was underwater. The import of that was just coming home to his rattled mind when a firm hand seized his collar, and he was hauled above the river's surface, gasping for air.

Archie heard Bush's warning yell and saw him aim a pistol — _where on earth had he gotten that?_ — down at the magazine. _Oh, no you don't, sir!_ he thought furiously. He cocked one of his own pistols, emptied long ago, bent down to his powder trail (still miraculously intact), and pulled the trigger. The flint struck the steel and the powder took light in an instant. Archie knew that the barge had seconds at most from the way it was burning. He raced across the deck with a desperate turn of speed, seized his captain by the waist, and jumped. Bush was a heavy man, and Archie's momentum was only just enough to carry them both over the rail before the barge exploded.

They crashed into the water a moment after an almighty bang announced the demise of the powder barge, and in the tumbling confusion of limbs and fire and water, he lost his hold on Bush. He surfaced, gasped for air and got a lungful of smoke that made him cough, but dove back down immediately, feeling blindly around in the muddy water until his hand closed on the rough wool of a naval uniform. He hauled upwards with all his strength, and was rewarded with the emergence of a spluttering and slightly indignant Captain Bush, who made the same mistake Archie had and took a deep breath of smoke. When his coughing had subsided, he rasped, "Still as much out of your mind as you were in Haiti, Kennedy."

"Still not leaving you behind, sir," Archie retorted hoarsely, though he had only just understood the comment through the ringing in his ears.

The river's current was slow and cold, but it, and the waves from the explosion, were carrying them steadily downstream. "What now?" Bush asked. "There's no Renown here to pull us out of the water."

"You mean you don't fancy swimming back to Le Havre, sir?"

"Kennedy," Bush growled warningly.

Archie took a breath to reply just as the wind sent a swirl of powder smoke into their faces and sent them both into paroxysms of coughing again. "Hold still, sir," he said as soon as he could speak again, and struck out with the hand that was not occupied with Bush's collar. "I'll start by getting us to shore."

A minute or so later, two singed, bruised, and very much bedraggled officers of His Majesty's Navy dragged themselves out of the water just downstream of the village of Caudebec. "Well then," Bush said, sitting down heavily on the bank, "we're thirty miles from Le Havre as the crow flies, our boat has most likely been blown to blazes, and Boney's soldiers, if there are any left after that lovely explosion of yours, are none too pleased with us. Suggestions, Mr. Kennedy?"

Archie's face broke into a grin, and instead of answering, he lifted up his voice in a hoarse hail, and out of the smoke came — the Nonsuch's launch, rowed by the three men Bush had ordered overboard preparatory to blowing up the barge. "Is that you, Mr. Kennedy, sir?" called a voice that Bush recognised as belonging to Abbott, one of the master's mates.

"That it is, Abbott, that it is!" Kennedy sang out in answer, as merrily as his hoarse voice would allow. "And the captain's here too."

The launch grounded itself a little sloppily on the bank, and Bush and Archie scrambled clumsily into it, helped by eager hands. The rushing excitement of battle was wearing off, and both men were beginning to discover that they had not escaped entirely unscathed. Bush reached instinctively for an oar to help the men row the launch, and hissed sharply as his left hand touched the wood. A closer inspection revealed that much of the left sleeve of his uniform was charred, and his hand was blistered and painful. Archie, beside him, swore sharply as he pulled at the oar for the first time, and Bush saw in the dubious firelight coming from upstream that his coat was singed and blackened all along the shoulders. He must have been uppermost when they struck the water. "Don't you mind, sirs," Abbott said, noticing their predicament. "If the Captain'll steer I can take two oars. Begging your pardon, sir."

Ordinarily Bush would have objected to a seaman, even a master's mate, taking charge of his launch in that manner. But the suggestion was a sensible one, and the steering oar needed only one hand to manage, so instead of rebuking Abbott, he said, "Very well, Abbott. Shift for'ard here, and I'll take the tiller."

Even with the sturdy Abbott and his two fellows at the oars, and the current with them, the journey back to Le Havre was more than long enough for Bush (and, no doubt, Archie as well) to discover that his soaking in icy water had left him half-frozen and aching in every limb, though the ringing in his ears seemed mercifully to be fading.

It was past dawn when they pulled up beside the quay and declared themselves to the sentries, and then they were received with far more bustle than either of them had expected. Brown appeared from somewhere, rescued them from the midst of a whirlwind of excited men, and ushered them straight up to Hornblower, who was staring out of the window of his office towards Caudebec, in an attitude that Bush knew meant he was in an evil temper. Bush braced himself for the explosion, and thought he could feel Archie doing the same beside him. But when Brown said, "Captain Bush and Mr. Kennedy, sir," Hornblower spun around with an eager quickness he rarely displayed, and nearly pulled Bush off balance in his eagerness to wring his hand.

"William! Archie!" he exclaimed. "Thank God. I feared the worst. But you're soaked through, both of you — what happened? Brown! Some dry clothes, and some brandy if you please! Now, both of you. Why didn't you come back with the other boats?"

Warming themselves gratefully by the fire, Bush and Kennedy, between them, explained more or less what had happened. Before they were even halfway through their report, Brown appeared with a heap of dry clothes in one arm and a bottle of brandy in the other, and Bush gratefully changed out of his drenched uniform, being careful of his left hand, which was throbbing dully now. 

"Brown!" Hornblower called, seeing this, "The surgeon. At once!" 

Then he poured brandy for each of them himself, and Bush felt the river's chill begin to leave his bones at last. Archie winced as he tried to get his jacket off of his singed shoulders, and Horatio carefully helped Archie ease out of the stiff, wet garment, interrupting Bush's report to snarl, "Where is that bloody surgeon already?"

Bush would, left to himself, have softened the account of his attempt to blow up the barge with him on it, but Archie insisted on telling it, and Horatio's face went impassive and very, very pale when he heard how close Bush had come to sacrificing his own life to save his remaining crew. "Thank God you're both all right," he repeated when they had come to the end of the tale.

He might have gone on, but the surgeon appeared at that juncture with bandages, compresses, and linseed oil, and he lapsed into a stiff and worried silence. Bush got to his feet once his hand was bandaged, and reached for the fresh coat that Brown had brought him, but Horatio forestalled him. "You're staying in Le Havre tonight, both of you," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "I'll have Brown bring up another bed. My rooms are just through there."

"I wouldn't want to put you out, Horatio," Bush protested.

"William," Horatio said, laying a hand on his uninjured arm, "It would put me out far more to have the two of you leave now and have to worry over you until you came back to report next. You haven't slept in almost twenty-four hours, anyway, man. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"I certainly shan't," said Archie wearily. "A bed sounds wonderful, though I think I shall have to sleep on my face."

"You will," the surgeon said, sounding professionally sympathetic, "but you are quite fortunate that the wool of your uniform retarded the fire, or you might not be sleeping at all without the aid of laudanum. As it is I think you will both recover with no worse than a little scarring, especially as I will have you under close supervision."

Brown reappeared with another bed at that juncture, not even having waited for Horatio's order to be made more than an expressed thought, and Horatio himself helped to make it up. The bedroom set aside for Le Havre's military governor was luxurious, as such quarters went, and there was plenty of room in it. Someone had made up a roaring fire in the grate, and the sheets were wonderfully warm. 

Bush was not so old that he couldn't stand the loss of a night's sleep, but neither was he so young that he failed to appreciate the opportunity to catch up on it. His last thought before he drifted off was of Horatio standing stiffly by the window, like a man at the gratings braced for the lash, and what he must have been thinking when most of the boat crews returned and neither Bush nor Archie were among them. He had just time to be fervently grateful for Archie and his quick thinking before sleep claimed him.

**Author's Note:**

> And nobody died and Hornblower did not lose his only friend, and peace was declared only a month or so later. 
> 
> Comments feed the muse!


End file.
